All species, including humans, are inherently adaptive, yet the organisations humans inhabit are by their nature resistant to change.
The management challenge of the future is to figure out how to build an organisation that evolves sufficiently quickly to be ahead of the changes occurring in the environment around them so as to be in a position to exploit and leverage those changes rather than just reacting to them.
Democratising knowledge, isn’t this a lovely term! I have heard it used on a number of occasions recently, and it came up again in an extraordinary TED presentation by Stephen Wolfram .
In just two words it nails the complex changes happening in numerous ways in our lives. Knowledge used to be power, now it is freely available, it is simply a tool, and the ones who use it best will win, rather than in the past, where the holder of the knowledge had a huge advantage.
Amongst all the other things that have changed, is the potential to turn simple supply chains that pump product into a channel driven only by capacity, into demand chains that respond backwards to demand signals from the customer.
This opportunity for change driven by a combination of the communication tools on the net, and the ability to assemble and analyse the drivers of demand in your particular market offers huge potential for innovation, efficiency, and differentiation based on the capabilities of those in the chain.
Anthropologist Robin Dunbar theorised that the maximum number of people any individual could maintain a relationship with was 150, which has become known as Dunbar’s number. It reflects the cognitive maximum for someone to know everyone in a group, and to be aware of the relationships between them all.
Social media has led to people into having many “friends” sometimes thousands, but in the human sense, they do not have a relationship, it is something different, for which I suspect we need a new term.
Human beings are social animals, and no matter how valuable our digital networks are to us, they are no substitute for the human interactions that define us, but are limited to around 150 individuals at any one time.
Working my way through a book on the implementation of “Lean” called “Manage to learn” an interesting book that further evolves the textbook as a story genre started by Eliyahu Goldratt’s best selling book “The Goal” originally published back in the early eighties, I saw the list of questions reproduced below.
The book itself is about the learning how to use A3 method of problem solving and teaching that has come out of Toyota and is very useful, but it struck me that the list is a generic list of sensible questions that should be asked in a wide range of circumstances where solving a problem is the task at hand.
1. What is the problem or issue?
2. Who owns the problem?
3. What are the root causes of the problem?
4. What are some possible countermeasures?
5. How will you decide which countermeasures to propose?
6. How will you get agreement from everyone concerned?
7. What is your implementation plan—who, what, when, where, how?
8. How will you know if your countermeasures work?
9. What follow-up issues can you anticipate? What problems may occur
during implementation?
10. How will you capture and share the learning?
Answer all these, and the path will be very clear.
All you hear about currently is the Australian “health debate” a debate the pollies have decided to have as a political exercise, are discussions about who gets to spend the money i.e. exercise the power, it has little to do with the health outcomes of Australians, that is just the excuse.
Cynical perhaps, but if it were otherwise, you would be hearing real discussions about the manner in which the billions were spent, not how just much, and by whom. We do need more to be spent, but more importantly in a society where health costs are increasing rapidly, and will continue to do so, we need debate, and importantly action, on the effectiveness of the spending, and the means by which that effectiveness, measured by patient outcomes, can be improved.
Applying proven process improvement, Lean, and Six Sigma commercial disciplines to public spending should be a priority, but perhaps that would impinge on vested interests a bit much, so we leave it alone.
The parody via the “Lean” hyperlink above has a scary resonance, and we leave discussion about the effectiveness of spending alone, to the great cost of to our community over the medium & long term.
Deep knowledge is pretty common these days, the facilities to accrue it are readily and freely available, and it is no longer a key differentiator.
However, what is still not common is what has always separated the run of the mill to the standout, organisations with engaging leadership, motivated people, and good judgment.
Judgment comes from a combination of deep knowledge, varied experience, qualitative or spatial skills, analytical skills, and a preparedness to learn from experience. It is primarily a personal quality, but increasingly it is becoming a pre-requisite for an organisation to take on these human qualities via its articulation of purpose, values, and emergent strategy.
A businesses I had some contact with a while ago had deep knowledge, there were PhD’s galore, but the lack of judgment and wide experience had hamstrung their efforts in the face of a changing competitive environment. The changes necessary will be challenging and painful to the people, and their view of their roles, probably not all will make it despite their undoubted knowledge, as the business model must change, and with it the way they create and sustain value.
Knowledge is a pre-requisite for success, but is not a guarantor of success.